Value Loops are a new kind of trade system, taking some of the best features of Math Trades and the Trade Finder.

Math trades are great, and one of their features and drawbacks is you have to actively participate in the list and adhere to its timetable.

The trade finder is great, but it only finds person-to-person trades, and the results are often overwhelmed by trades of mismatched value.

Enter a new kind of trade system, the "Value Loop". This provides a means for people to automatically mark how they value various games for the purposes of trading and have an external program automatically identify person-to-person trades and small loops.

How it works:

In the "condition" field of a game you have marked as "trade" or "want", you add a special indicator indicating how much you value that game. For games you want, you put "wantvalue:XXX" where XXX is the how much you want that game. For games you're trading, you put "offervalue:YYY" where YYY is equal to the lowest wantvalue game you'd accept in trade. The values of XXX and YYY can be anything, but I'd suggest either using a scale of 1 to 100 or using your currency of choice. As long as you are consistent, it doesn't matter what absolute numbers you use.

For example:

Kingdoms (wantvalue:10)
GIPF (wantvalue:15)
We the People (wantvalue:60)

Mystery on the Nile (offervalue:15)
Trump: The Game (offervalue: 10)
Funkenschlag (offervalue:50)
Poisson d'Avril (offervalue:100)

This means
- I am willing to trade "Trump: The Game" in exchange for any of the 3 games I want (10 is lower than or equal to all the want values).
- I am willing to trade Mystery on the Nile for GIPF or We the People
- I am willing to trade Funkenschlag only for We The People
- I am currently unwilling to trade Poisson d'Avril (no wantvalue greater than or equal to 100)

Once you've marked your games, you go to the Value Loop tool and enter your username:

http://boardgamestuff.com/cgi/valueloop

(or, if you want to cut and paste, to skip the annoying frame wrapper, http://mkgray.com:8000/cgi/valueloop)

Currently, when you submit the request, it retrieves your tradelist and any other users tradelists who want what you're offering and so on. Tradelists are cached for 10 minutes (which will go up, eventually) but the tradelist of the username entered is always retrieved anew.

Loops of up to 5 people are found. The finder can take a while to get the results.

Previous discussion of this trade scheme is at http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/135123

Yes, this is worth pointing out. Until many people have tagged games, it won't find any loops.

Features that will be included in the future, but don't hold your breath:

- "Near" loops. That is, loops that could be formed if people would just raise their wantvalue and lower their offervalue a bit.
- Multi-game loops. That is, I trade GameX and GameY for GameZ.
- Best guess loops. For people who have not tagged games, but based on how other people have tagged them, loops that might be formed.

Great idea. Just to be clear, entering these tags is to help find *potential* trades, right? If a potential trade is found, you are not obligated to complete the trade. I can imagine people setting them, then getting a copy another way or forgetting to reset the price as a game goes out of print.

Yeah, it's like the trade finder, it finds possibilities. No commitment is implied by tagging your games. Of course, best effort should be made to keep things up to date and consistent with ones actual willingness to trade, but that's just good manners.

Can we have more text in the condition field?

Example:

"offeravalue:50 I have an extra copy of the largest Sac Noir version of Bausack for trade in excellent condition, with more than complete 101 pieces."

Yes, you can have arbitrary additional text in the condition field, and that text (including the tag) will be displayed in any trade loops found, since that may be relevant.

For example, I have RoboRally with a wantvalue:25, specifying the new Avalon Hill edition.

For that matter, it doesn't matter how oddly buried the "magic string" is:

"This game is awesome thisismywantvalue:20.5/19.3/100.893234,300=YES"

will be extracted as a wantvalue of 20.

Can confirm that other text can be there as I have labelled all my want/offer values to help folks understand these "condition" comments should they run trade finder.

Matthew - can you whip up an XML API that pulls out our wants/trades sorted by value so that we can cross-check our entries? This might be useful tool to help folks confirm their values. Right now the lists I have are alphabetical, so takes a bit of back and forth to ensure consistent values.

Wow. It's good to see the massive untapped computational power available here put to proper (automated) use.

I hope Aldie is paying you what you are worth, Matthew.

I had a concept brewing within my head during several of the last Math trades about some automated scripts that could query the individuals want lists and use BGG's user rating as a basis for setting up trades... but this is better. And even more so, since it's done.

Truly, 'tis a wondrous age.

Well, I'm in sorta... I need to tweak values, but for now I've got info there.

Has anyone found a closed loop yet?

I'm very interested in this idea, and can't wait to see what happens when more people add want and offer values.

This is very cool. I only have a limited number of games up for trade, and no one wants them (expected). But hopefully, as more people become aware of this, it will really grow. Great idea.

I don't believe there are any closed loops yet, but, there are some loops that are successfully being "supressed" by virtue of a substantial value mismatch. For example:

RPardoe sends Loopin' Louie to lawmama.
lawmama sends Fairy Tale to snoweel.
snoweel sends Conquest of Empire to RPardoe.

But, RPardoe doesn't like that trade (he values Loopin' Louie substantially more than he wants Conquest of Empire) and snoweel doesn't like it (he values Conquest of Empire much more than he wants Fairy Tale). lawmama would be thrilled though

The "closest" trade would be a one-to-one: RPardoe sends lawmama St. Petersburg-The Banquet in exchange for Ricochet Robot, but lawmama wouldn't consent to that by almost a factor of 2 for his values.

Hey - I'm willing to talk things out if anyone is interested.

Nice to know that I am involved in the two almost loops.

Lawmama would indeed be thrilled to take that first trade!

If we assume traditional "Trade Finder" rules (ie, all games equal value), you end up in 5 trades, all involving snoweel, lawmama or both.

There's also a bunch of other value-mismatched loops with grandslam, dreadpirate, Ryhesling, mkgray, and Jezztek.

I'll probably look at augmenting the output with things like "If you assign wantvalues to the following games, trades are more likely to be found." and then provide a list of games that might close the loops.

It would be nice if this was put in the news section so more people would get involved.

How about an option to base it all on Wishlist Priority? It's already set for many people, and serves much the same function.

Mark,

Sadly, the desire for something and the amount someone is willing to pay for it are often not linked. I want Montage just so I can try it, but am not willing to pay $100. I really want Great Wall of China, because I like meaty fillers, but won't pay more than 12-14 for it.

- Jonathan

Agreed. That'd probably pull a lot more people in, pronto, which seems to be needed for this to go anywhere.

I wonder how many people will be needed before we start seeing trades? Right now I think we have at least 22 (22 thumbs to this thread), possibly more like 40. We'll probably need more than the average math trade, since people seem more willing to make.. well.. worse trades there than they are outside of that milieu.

Maybe we should make a trade geeklist about it. What could the geeklist discuss to make it interesting in itself, other than being an advertisement? Numbering systems?

Actually, maybe it should wait for wider advertisement until there's a better UI for entering the numbers. That's the biggest problem right now, aside from the lack of people using it, and I suspect it could drive people off who might otherwise be interested.

Very cool. I noticed this before but didn't read closely enough. Updated my trade and want lists now.

I'll ask Aldie. I'm always reluctant to pin my own "personal projects", but he probably won't mind.




Good guess: 39. Though, some of those have only tagged a few games.



I thought about doing this (eg, a "fake" math trade as an advertisement list), but haven't gotten to it. Feel free do to one.



Yeah, unfortunately, this isn't likely to change anytime soon.

It is pretty easy to enter. I think trade addicts will do it without UI changes.

Go to your trade list.
Click on the condition box on that summary screen.
Type "Offervalue:"
Ctrl-C
Add value
Click - Ctrl + v - Enter amount - Save - Repeat for each item on list

Do the same with wantvalue: on your wantlist

I'm getting some weird stuff in my value loop finder. It's checking games and loop paths it's already checked. It'll be kinda huge to copy and paste. Just check value loops with my user name and find the area where it runs through dreadpirate's games.

Hm, it appears the tree pruning isn't working right. I'll look into it.

I believe I've fixed it. Definitely let me know if you notice anything weird like this in the future.

And, the good news, it appears there is a match in the system now:

dreadpirate sends Memoir '44 to ososnilknarf
ososnilknarf sends nexus Ops to dreadpirate

Obviously, they'd have to actually agree on this, and dreadpirate does have a note that he'd rather trade with the Terrain packs, but still, pretty cool.